[PixelPusher]

We've been hiring for a little while in Los Angeles. The problem is that there are some Rails developers, but most of the ones I've met are pretty entitled. They expect 100K+, benefits, telecommuting, etc. The problem is that most of them are fairly incompetent when it comes to everything else.

Ask them about database design, sockets, parallelism, map/reduce, memory allocation, etc. and you'll get blank stares.

This is good though, because it makes people who know those things that much more valuable as well they should be.

[benjaminwootton]

I don't think expecting $100k+, benefits, telecommuting etc necessarily indicates entitlement.

Most people in finance, senior managers, doctors, lawyers, architects, management consultants etc wouldn't get out of bed for less than that, especially in a big city with high cost of living.

I think its great that techies are starting to realise their value and grab a piece of that for themselves.

[PixelPusher]

What dictates entitlement is asking or expecting something without actually having earned it.

Obviously finance, doctors, and lawyers went to school for many years. They earned it.

Developers, who can't even explain map/reduce or other important CS concepts, have not.

[benjaminwootton]

Market value has nothing to do with having 'earned it' or the numbers of years that you have put in at school.

It's a function of supply and demand and the value that the individual can create.

[PixelPusher]

Well now you're arguing market value not entitlement, which I didn't say it was a bad thing.

If you're a Rails dev, yeah you're valuable and you should be getting paid that much.

However, you still have a lot to learn, and if you're asking for telecommuting and you don't even know what a thread is. That's entitlement, because you think that just because you know Rails, anyone will hire you and that you're 'good enough' to work from home.

Developers we'd want to hire don't just know Rails.

[benjaminwootton]

I am arguing that people are not asking for these packages out of entitlement.

They are asking for them out of increased awareness of their market value.

In the end the market will sort this out, and some developers will inevitably be left disapointed.

However, I think it's quite reasonable that techies of all skill levels are pushing for and often achieving the salaries and working conditions that they want.

(I really don't see how asking for telecommuting is entitled by the way. I would love to do it for quality of life and productivity reasons, but that is completely divorced from how well I rate myself etc.)

[PixelPusher]

Asking for telecommuting, equity, and time to work on other projects is ridiculous. I've gotten these requests from developers who have only done basic Rails projects.

Do you think you deserve a better quality of life than say, a teacher? a doctor? I fail to see how even comparing yourself to them is not entitlement, especially if you're not a CS major.

The whole productivity bit is crap, I've been on that side and I know it. You may be more productive, but for very selfish reasons. The business is not more productive, and you isolate yourself from everyone else.

Businesses don't generally fail because of bad tech, they fail because they're not nimble enough to adapt and test ideas quickly.

[RandallBrown]

I can't explain map reduce. I generally know what it is but I've never needed to use it or implement it.

That doesn't mean I'm not a good engineer. It just means I haven't done something before.

[PixelPusher]

That's great, I don't expect an academic explanation but just having heard of it is pretty good. That question by itself is not a deal breaker. An 'engineer' should at least know about things like data structures or just anything beyond Rails. Most interesting problems require more than knowing how to create CRUD apps.

[doktrin]

Yeah, I agree. This is one of the pitfalls of working in a fairly unstructured and nascent industry. Everyone seemingly has their own collection of miscellany and trivia that encapsulates what a Good Engineer (tm) ought to know.

[zalew]

why are you comparing a qualified doctor or lawyer to a web dev who doesn't know anything about database design?

[benjaminwootton]

I would argue that it's possible for even an average web developer to create at least a comparable amount of economic value as the doctor or lawyer.

I don't know why our own community find this hard to accept?

We're a rare species who can create massive value for ourselves or our employers. We can build great products that many would pay for, or automate away whole departments of people with our code - not that I take any pleasure from the latter.

And yet we tacitly accept that there should be a whole class of people above us who have the right to earn more because they ground it out at school for a few years?

[PixelPusher]

An average web developer in no way can compare to a lawyer or a doctor.

First of all, doctors generally save lives. And they have to go to school for at least 8 years. Lawyers, almost just as long.

How long does it take to learn Rails, HTML, and Javascript? A few months?

Average web developers are not that special. However, great engineers for whom Rails is an afterthought compared to what they know, are indeed comparable.

[zalew]

a web dev who doesn't know databases is like [some creative analogy about a doctor hurting people]

[doktrin]

It's practically impossible to be a web developer without knowing anything about databases.

Most of the topics the parent listed are significantly more complex than "knowing about databases", which implies that "database design" in this context isn't simply drawing an ER diagram and correctly identifying the purpose of a foreign key.

Given that the other topics listed include sockets, parallelism & map reduce, my guess is that "database design" might in this case mean distributed database concepts and/or sharding.

[ericb]

> 100K+, benefits, telecommuting,

So, a not particularly high salary considering cost of living and benefits too? Where would they get these crazy expectations?

Oh right, the open market.

[PixelPusher]

That's why i said it's a good thing. It bumps up the base developer salary and makes experienced developers even more valuable. At least those who are able to properly market themselves as such.

[JimboOmega]

$100k+ for a senior developer is really not that much... but. The "properly market themselves" is a catch. I don't seem to be able to 'speak' west coast right, or something. Which is why I find this article about a relocating person interesting.

It's always been this way. When I got out of college, the division of the company I'd been interning with had an office in San Diego that was hiring for skills I had. I wanted to work there since my GF at the time was going to UCSD. Same industry, same company, same division of that company. Already vetted and approved by many months of interning. They wouldn't give me the time of day. Nor would any other companies I applied to out there.

The local (to me) office and several other companies in the area had no problem giving me offers, even though I was putting almost no effort into the local search (since, after all, I wanted to be in SD).

It's somewhat better now, when I'm trying to move to SF - I've gotten a few phone interviews, but nothing like the insanity the article is describing.

Edit: I forgot the original reason I wanted to reply: To mention that I personally have no interest in telecommunicating. I'm a social person, and to me, a lot of the appeal of working for a startup is to be working with peers that I can engage with every day. I don't want (to be) a voice on the phone during scrums that comes to the office once a year.

[epoxyhockey]

Ask them about database design, sockets, parallelism, map/reduce, memory allocation, etc. and you'll get blank stares.

You might have better success just advertising for someone who has experience with whatever large data requirement you are working with. Senior engineers can learn the framework if they aren't already familiar with it.

I wouldn't expect a RoR engineer to be very concerned with memory allocation, parallelism or sockets. They are busy building sexy CRUD web applications.

[tomp]

Well, I've been programming since I was 13, I know everything about how computers work, from asm to HTTP, I've tried databases, parallelism, Haskell, distributed map/reduce, ... but I'm not a Ruby/Rails developer (yet, I grok Django ATM) and not from the US (so remote is the only option), so mostly uncompatible... :(

[PixelPusher]

Honestly, I'd more likely work w/ someone like you and teach them Rails than the opposite. MVC frameworks are very similar and a good developer should be able to switch easily.

I suspect that employers who only look for Rails developers are hurting themselves.